Special Assistant to the CEO, Breakwater

RF Catalytic Capital, Breakwater; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Breakwater Initiative is seeking an energetic, highly organized Special Assistant to provide strategic, programmatic, administrative, communications, and logistical support to the CEO. The role combines executive and administrative duties with project management, offering timely, proactive, and accurate correspondence internally and externally.

This front-row opportunity places you at the intersection of AI, the future of work, economic policy, and society, helping shape a growing organization

Qualifications

• Excellent writing skills and clear communication across audiences.
• Strong project and program management experience with ability to juggle priorities.
• Exceptional attention to detail and a disciplined approach to time management.
• Ability to handle confidential information with discretion and tact.
• Warm, diplomatic, and collaborative working style with strong people skills.

Responsibilities

• Keep the CEO's inbox organized: triage, draft responses, surface priorities.
• Own the CEO's calendar and travel logistics with accuracy and proactive planning.
• Coordinate meetings, notes, and follow-ups; ensure commitments are tracked and completed.
• Develop and maintain project plans, trackers, and briefs for fundraising, partnerships, and initiatives.
• Provide a trusted sounding board and high-quality written communication on behalf of the CEO.

Skills

Excellent writing

Project management

Time management

Attention to detail

Discretion

Interpersonal skills

Conflict resolution

Tools

Google Workspace

Microsoft Office

Claude AI

Apple devices

Job description

About Breakwater Initiative

AI will upend work as we know it. Breakwater Initiative is a new, action-oriented policy shop with a single north star: finding the very best ideas to support workers through AI's economic transformation and laying the groundwork for an economy that enables people to have purpose, agency, and the ability to thrive. We do not study the problem from a distance. We conceptualize, test, and scale the ideas, institutions, and models that will shape the future of work and our social contract.

Our work spans three pillars: building the big ideas, policy agenda, and public infrastructure to support a response commensurate with the moment; testing new approaches and scaling what works; and engaging ordinary people in building an affirmative vision for what comes next. We are fiercely independent and nonpartisan: responsible to the public interest, not beholden to any lab, party, or private interest. That independence is the basis for the broad public trust this work demands.

Breakwater is in its founding phase, currently operating as a fiscally sponsored project of RF Catalytic Capital, Inc. This is a rare opportunity to build an institution from the ground up at a moment when the questions it tackles are among the most consequential in American economic and civic life.

The Opportunity

Breakwater seeks an energetic, highly organized, and self-directed Special Assistant to provide strategic, programmatic, administrative, communications, and logistical support to the CEO. The role combines executive and administrative support with project management, and it requires timely, proactive, and accurate correspondence both internally and externally.

This is a rare, front-row opportunity to join a growing, entrepreneurial, high-profile team in a fast-paced environment at the intersection of AI, the future of work, economic policy, and society. The portfolio will grow and shift as Breakwater does, and you will be exposed to a remarkable range of issues, people, and ideas along the way. What ties it together is trust: you will be the person who holds the details, the logistics, and some of the master plan, and whom the CEO can count on completely. It is an exciting, high-energy moment in Breakwater's founding, and a chance to help shape a new organization from the ground up.

Work Schedule

This role follows a hybrid schedule and is required to be in the office Monday through Thursday.

Key Responsibilities

Keep the CEO's world running

This is the heart of the role.

• Own and protect the CEO's inbox: read, triage, research, and route incoming correspondence, draft responses in her voice, and surface what truly needs her attention.
• Own the CEO's calendar and scheduling: guard her time fiercely, align every commitment to top priorities, and protect space for deep work, family, and the things that keep her at her best.
• Manage all travel, meeting logistics, expense reports, and reimbursements with ease and accuracy.
• Build and maintain the systems, files, and trackers that keep nothing from slipping through the cracks.
• Serve as the keeper of the record: capture key decisions, meeting outcomes, and next steps, and make sure they actually happen.

Meetings, follow-through, and coordination

• Join the CEO in internal and external meetings, capture clear notes, and take ownership of every follow-up.
• Drive follow-through to completion, coordinating and communicating across Breakwater's team and collaborators so that the things that were promised actually happen.
• Be poised and credible in the room: confident enough to hold your own in external meetings and to write polished, initiative-taking follow-ups on the CEO's behalf.
• Debrief with the CEO afterward: help her make sense of how a meeting went, think through the next move, and turn conversations into action.

The master plan: project management, fundraising, and external engagement

The CEO is carrying a large and growing agenda across fundraising, external relationships, and visibility. Your job is to help her hold it, organize it, and move it forward.

• Act as project manager for the CEO's biggest priorities: build the plans, track the workstreams, anticipate deadlines and dependencies, and keep everything moving proactively rather than reactively.
• Hold the master plan, so the CEO always knows what is coming, what is owed, and what comes next.
• Draft compelling, warm, high-quality correspondence to funders, partners, and collaborators, often in the CEO's voice.
• Support fundraising operations behind the scenes: track the funder pipeline, manage timely follow-up, prepare briefing materials, and help maintain relationships with current and prospective supporters.
• Help the CEO prioritize: digest incoming information, distill the key points, surface tradeoffs, and protect her focus on what matters most.

A trusted sounding board

• Serve as someone the CEO can think out loud with: a sounding board who keeps track of the many things in flight, reflects them back clearly, and offers a smart, grounded perspective when it helps.
• Bring real strategic texture to debriefs and to shaping what happens next, while senior leaders carry Breakwater's high-level strategy and public representation, freeing you to focus on supporting the CEO and keeping the operation humming.

Qualifications and Characteristics

An ideal candidate will bring many of the following:

• Generally expected to have three to five years of relevant experience in a chief of staff, special assistant, special advisor, executive support, or similar high-trust operating and coordinating role, where you were trusted with real responsibility and ran point on projects and follow-through.
• An unflappable, super-organized go-getter who can see the forest from the trees — proactive and obsessed with getting every detail right, but never letting perfectionism get in the way of getting things done.
• Exceptional attention to detail and the ability to thrive in time-bound, high-pressure environments.
• A gift for organizing yourself and others to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, with strong project management skills and a proven track record of juggling multiple priorities at once.
• Excellent writing skills, with a demonstrated ability to collect, synthesize, and structure information into clear and compelling correspondence, agendas, briefings, and summaries.
• Excellent people skills: warm, diplomatic, and patient, with a sharp read on people and situations — and someone who does not judge a book by its cover.
• The ability to handle confidential and sensitive information with the utmost discretion.
• Someone who genuinely enjoys working behind the scenes and takes pride in making someone else shine — a troubleshooter, diplomat, human database, travel agent, inbox wrangler, ghostwriter, and project manager, often all in the same day.
• Able to raise disagreements agreeably and comfortable with direct, honest communication.
• Comfort and proficiency with technology, including Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets), Microsoft Office, LLMs like Claude, and Apple products.
• Intellectual curiosity and a love of learning: energized by exposure to a wide range of issues, people, and ideas, from AI and the labor market to the nuts and bolts of building a new organization, and quick to pick things up.
• A genuine interest in the intersection of AI and work, and care about workers and the economy in this moment of rapid technological change.
• Commitment to economic fairness, worker dignity, and the responsible development of AI.

BreakwaterInitiative is committed to equal employmentopportunityand to building a team that reflects the diversity of the workers and communities it serves. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply.